I'm a technology, privacy, and information security reporter and most recently the author of the book This Machine Kills Secrets, a chronicle of the history and future of information leaks, from the Pentagon Papers to WikiLeaks and beyond.
I've covered the hacker beat for Forbes since 2007, with frequent detours into digital miscellania like switches, servers, supercomputers, search, e-books, online censorship, robots, and China. My favorite stories are the ones where non-fiction resembles science fiction. My favorite sources usually have the word "research" in their titles.
Since I joined Forbes, this job has taken me from an autonomous car race in the California desert all the way to Beijing, where I wrote the first English-language cover story on the Chinese search billionaire Robin Li for Forbes Asia. Black hats, white hats, cyborgs, cyberspies, idiot savants and even CEOs are welcome to email me at agreenberg (at) forbes.com. My PGP public key can be found here.

On Wednesday, the FBI announced that they arrested 29-year-old Ross William Ulbricht, the Silk Road’s accused administrator, in the Glen Park branch of the San Francisco Public Library at 3:15 Pacific time on Tuesday. Ulbricht has been charged with engaging in a money laundering and narcotics trafficking conspiracy as well as computer hacking. The Department of Justice has seized the Silk Road’s website as well as somewhere between $3.5 to 4 million in bitcoins, the cryptographic currency used to buy drugs on the Silk Road.

Earlier this summer, the Silk Road’s administrator calling himself by the Dread Pirate Roberts pseudonym gave his first extended interview to Forbes over the same Tor anonymity network that has hosted the Silk Road and its users since the site’s creation in early 2011.

Forbes estimated at the time that the Silk Road was earning between $30 and $45 million in annual revenue. In fact, the number may have been far larger: The criminal complaint against Ulbricht states that the Silk Road turned over $1.2 billion in revenue since its creation, and generated $80 million commissions for its operator or operators.

The FBI hasn’t yet revealed how it managed to track down Ulbricht in spite of his seemingly careful use of encryption and anonymity tools to protect his identity and those of his customers and vendors who visited Silk Road as often as 60,000 times per day. The FBI spokesperson declined to offer details about the investigation, but told me that “basically he made a simple mistake and we were able to identify him.”

One clue mentioned in the criminal complaint against Ulbricht was a package seized from the mail by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol as it crossed the Canadian border, containing nine seemingly counterfeit identification documents, each of which used a different name but featured Ulbricht’s photograph. The address on the package was on 15th street in San Francisco, where police found Ulbricht and matched his face to the one on the fake IDs.

The complaint also mentions security mistakes, including an IP address for a VPN server used by Ulbricht listed in the code on the Silk Road, mentions of time in the Dread Pirate Roberts’ posts on the site that identified his time zone, and postings on the Bitcoin Talk forum under the handle “altoid,” which was tied to Ulbricht’s Gmail address.

In his conversation with me, which took place on July 4th, the Silk Road administrator calling himself the Dread Pirate Roberts espoused Libertarian ideals and claimed that the use of Bitcoin in combination with Tor had stymied law enforcement and “won the State’s War on Drugs.”

The seizure notice replacing what was once the homepage of the booming black market known as Silk Road.

He also said he intended to bring his marketplace into mainstream awareness, and had recently launched the first non-Tor website for the Silk Road known as SilkRoadlink, which remains online. “Up until now I’ve done my best to keep Silk Road as low profile as possible … letting people discover [it] through word of mouth,” Roberts says. “At the same time, Silk Road has been around two and a half years. We’ve withstood a lot, and it’s not like our enemies are unaware any longer.”

One remaining mystery in Ulbricht’s criminal complaint is whether he was in fact the only–or the original–Dread Pirate Roberts. In his July interview with me, Roberts said that he had in fact inherited the Dread Pirate title from the site’s creator, who may have also used the same pseudonym.

As of around noon Wednesday, the Silk Road’s forum for users also remained online, and the site’s loyal users were grieving over the Silk Road takedown and mourning the arrest of Ulbricht, whose apparent persona as the Dread Pirate Roberts was a widely respected figure in the online drug community.

Another user blamed the Dread Pirate Roberts’ carelessness, including his decision to raise his profile by giving an interview to Forbes. “Sorry, but when he gave the fucking Forbes interview I imagined this would be coming,” wrote a user calling himself Dontek. “Should have kept all this shit on the down low rather than publicly bragging about it.”

Ulbricht’s LinkedIn profile describes his background as a graduate researcher in materials science at Pennsylvania State University, as well as an undergrad degree in physics from the University of Texas at Dallas.

According to Ulbricht’s grandmother, Martha Ulbricht, who was reached by phone, the younger Ulbricht received a full scholarship to UT Dallas. “Ross has always been an upstanding person as far as we know and a rather outstanding person,” she said.

Ulbricht’s half-brother Travis Ulbricht, also reached by phone in Sacramento, described him as an “exceptionally bright, smart kid” who had no criminal history to his knowledge.

Asked what he did for a living before moving to San Francisco, Ulbricht’s grandmother said, “Something on the computer…a little technical for me. He was good with computers.”

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Too bad. Just further proof that one lone 26 year old can outfox the entire FBI for years, that the FBI is certainly outmatched. The war on drugs is a farce. Drugs need to be classified and regulated. taxed ridiculously and LEGALIZED. This prurient Prohibition is stupid. headed by puritans who’s time is well past, the older generation knows this is a battle lost. Go to sleep and let the younger generation take over.

It seems to me that you’re missing the point, oh youthful one of limited life experience. Or, at least that’s what I assume based on your comments. First, it would appear that the “lone 26 year old” did NOT outfox the entire FBI as they took their time to build a case and… (wait for it…) CAUGHT Ulbricht through his own arrogance, carelessness, and stupidity. Maybe you haven’t followup enough to know that Ulbricht outed himself without knowing it and, again, the FBI took the time to build a case against him and ensure that they had the correct person. You seem to be stating that breaking the laws with which one does not agree is okay. If one does not like the drug laws then, fine! But follow the rule of law to change them rather than choosing to behave like a spoiled child and circumvent them. Or maybe the point of breaking the law in this case was the opportunity to make millions upon millions of dollars that legality and rule following wouldn’t afford Ulbricht? SHOCKER!! Perhaps your generation needs a nap and a time out while us adults deal with the reality of your generations rampant disregard for the rule of law. Nighty-night, sweetpea.

if you would legalize drugs that would free up a lot of tax money used for housing inmates and violence, murder, and gang related crimes would drop substantially. no prohibition throughout the history of man ended well like mobsters selling booze when alcohol was illegalized Ron Paul saw this and was going to try to change it but mainstream media gave no publicity to him only mentioned his name once and that man was fired the government is beyond corrupt and the people will stand up to them soon if they don’t change and follow the constitution now you can take a nap.

“There are just laws and there are unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that an unjust law is no law at all… One who breaks an unjust law must do it openly, lovingly…I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

What makes you think insulting and patronizing our generation will make us listen anyhow? You’re no better nor justified than the original poster. We’re all adults here. No need throw temper tantrums.

we live in a world where law is used to oppress … laws throughout history have been used for oppression rather than for the good of man. Belief in “the rule of law” is practically a religion, one that has come and gone many times before. When Jesus said, “let he who is without guilt cast the first stone.” he was asking people to think for themselves, rather than blindly follow a corrupted list of rules … and stone a woman to death in the process. So, let he (or she) who is without guilt sentence this young man to prison for the rest of his life.

it would seem you are the one missing the point. ulbricht is only one guy, and look how many drugs he moved through his site in the two years it took for the FBI to catch him. how many tax based resources did the FBI spend to do that, and how many other people are still doing it? not to mention none of the vendors on the site were busted, so they are still free to find a new way to sell drugs through new web pages or just on the street. so in essence, the drug war is lost, and there are no legal means to change those laws because the states have already tried to do so by legalizing marijuana, and the federal government is just tromping on their rights to do so and as a plant the cannabis species actually shows benefits beyond that of its THC based use. its still illegal to grow hemp in the states, which is a un-smokable form of the plant that would save millions of acres in woodlands from paper companies. now if we cant even find a legal way to change the laws on marijuana, how do you think we could change it for any other drug? i think you need to take a nap time and let ANYONE but yourself or people like you deal with the laws, because no one ever progressed through blatant arrogance. ive also never heard a true adult refer to themselves and people their age as “us adults” i mean come on, that last time i heard a line like that was from my teen sister while she baby sat me. i’ve seen 40 year olds act like spoiled teen brats plenty.

Well since crime is down and our generation is due to inherent the moronic lack of foresight that your generation committed, you have nothing honest to say. Oh and thanks for taking our jobs because you guys forgot to save money like your parents did before you. Good luck in heaven.

Why would an entire generation of people need to take a nap and a time out because one person disagrees with you. Further more are you aware that this generation’s youth does include adults of this generation…. You wrote a lot of stupid comments in your response, and you sound really bitter.

The FBI…”outmatched?” Uh,.. that may have BEEN the case “past-tense”, but there’s something you’re failing to notice: 1. The FBI first busted Freedom Hosting and arrested it’s owner, a Mr. Marque (?). Now, the FBI has shut down Silk Road ( as was accurately “predicted”)and arrested IT’S owner Ross Ulbright! Dude, right now, the “Dark-Web” is getting an NSA/FBI “RECTAL EXAM” and “FULL BODY C.T. SCAN” COMBINED!!!!!!!!! The authorities are chopping down the Dark Web like a frickin’ TREE!! Here’s the best advice I can offer you if you’ve been doing ANY kind of business on the Dark Web: 1. Get the Onion Router OFF of your computer! Remove it from your list of available “applications!” 2. I’m afraid you’d be very well advised to remove your computer hard-drive and INCINERATE it!! Anyone found to be ANYwhere on the TOR search system should “heed” this warning, take the necessary steps to destroy what “evidence” he or she may have on his or her computer, and be fully “prepared” for the day that they get the dreaded “knock” on the front door! And whatever you do, do not, .. I repeat DO NOT attempt to do ANYthing more on the Dark Web! Not even “political dissent!” The Dark Web is effectively “GONE” now. The entire “thing” could now have been taken over by the FBI, the NSA, Customs, the CIA, Interpol ( The InterNational Police force ), etc.. At very LEAST, no one will ever be abled to “trust” the Dark Web for anything, ever again. Not even to express dissenting “political” views. For all intensive purposes, The Dark Web ( again ) is no more. R.I.P The days of Internet Freedom are just about “OVER.”

Not to mention that he was raking in the profits that usually went to other criminals, including legal ones, tax-free, with digital currency that isn’t easily manipulated & without regulation. He was taking on empires much older and more powerful than himself. Bitcoin value crashed after Silk Road was busted. It’s going to take much more than that to shake such established institutions.

Most drugs are classified but are prohibited, not regulated. Drug Regulation refers to a system of control for the licensed production, distribution and sale of substances whose quality, and therefore safety, is assured. (Usually by government). In most places the only regulated recreational drugs are alcohol, tobacco and, in some places, cannabis- along with any drugs included in regulated food products, such as caffeine-containing drinks.